In the first five years of building our company, I had exactly $0 for marketing. So I had to get creative.
I was bootstrapping everything and still living with my mom to save money and reinvest every dollar back into the business. There was no budget for ads, no agency, no clever PPC campaign. What I had was time, energy, and a willingness to do whatever it took to get eyes on the company.
Every parade in the area, I made sure we were in it. To me, each one was another room full of potential clients. I hand-wrote on paint sticks and printed up “coupons” to physically hand out to the people lining the streets. I couldn’t afford to pay staff to help, so I asked family to come walk alongside the trucks and hand out candy — and in exchange, I bought everyone pizza when we were done.
I knew people needed to remember us, so I took a real swing: I financed a Slingshot, that half-motorcycle, half-car thing that turns heads everywhere it goes. Getting approved for that loan was almost impossible at the time, and it was a stretch I probably had no business making. But people remembered us in those parades. It paid off.
Here’s what I learned in those early innings: building a business from zero doesn’t have to be sexy. You have to be willing to put in the work and do the things nobody else wants to do. You have to think outside the box and find creative ways to earn attention when you can’t buy it.
We don’t do many parades these days. I’d rather give my team time to spend with their families, and spend that time with mine, too. But I’ll always be grateful for those scrappy years — because the freedom we have now was bought with that early hustle.
If you’re in the early stages of your own business, take it from me: you don’t need a big budget. You need creativity, consistency, and the willingness to start before everything’s perfect.